Scorched Heir Ascendant

Xiao Yuan came back to the Xiao family as the son who had made good. Xiao Li, the second son, went to call on the other great houses and was frozen out. Xiao Yuan then used Xiao Li's mother as leverage to make him marry into the Li family as a live-in husband, and crippled him. Li Qiao'er found him out in heavy rain and took him in. She taught him a line of medicine that had been kept forbidden and the alchemy that went with it, and his body came back. The families set the wedding to Li Qiao'er as one more humiliation for him. At the ceremony he used what he had learned, and the betrayals the noble houses had kept quiet for years were laid out in front of the guests.